by Anna Tambour
He pulled himself together. Concentrate, dumbass! The larva was emerging, definitely emerging.
Jack swore under his breath. Isn't it always the peripherals that screw up results? What's the Spanish or Portugese for shut up? Hell, she probably's never heard either language.
The woman's eyes were huge. Her hands hovered near her face.
Lorimer got a jar out of his pocket, unscrewed the lid and showed it to her, smiling reassurance. To his amazement, she continued to scream as if her brain had been sucked out of its skull by an overactive larynx.
Lorimer didn't know what to do, but he had to do something fast. He'd been told that the reason so few brazos had ever been seen alive is that people they had dwelled in had killed them by doing silly things like trying to pull them out, or bashing themselves into trees or jumping into rivers and off precipices.
But it could be a more delicate problem than that. On closer inspection, the brazos was, Jack decided, agitated. He didn't blame it. That scream could rip the skin off a monkey, let alone traumatise one delicate grub. The woman's taut facial muscles were squeezing the grub to buggery, possibly crushing its grips in her skin.
Jack was a lateral thinker, so he knew he could solve this problem, but dammit. Shut her up. Then you can fantasize taxonomies. He had never believed the legends, but if they were true ... What will I name it? His strong back rippled in excitement. He lived somewhere else for a moment, but sound brought him back.
She screamed with her mouth so wide open that he could see that gigantic cheek bulge from the inside. Her eyes were wide open and focussed on his. If she only knew how impossible she was making it for him to think. He closed his eyes to concentrate.
And then, aha! He remembered his technique for hypnotising the larva of the Dermatobia hominis so that he could examine it alive in the act of suspended pupation. He climbed down from the tree and reached his hand out to her.
She flinched and turned without closing her mouth, without stopping that pure, maddening screech. She was going to run away! Lorimer grabbed her shoulder, and she was so slick with sweat, she almost slipped away. But just when he thought he might have to knock her out, she stopped struggling and hung her head, and now the scream changed pitch and steadied to a high-pitched steam-under-pressure. Unbearable. She was passive now, though, so he changed his grip on her shoulder and repositioned himself so that he could keep the larva in view, and still be just behind her, best positioned for his hypnotising treatment.
He ran his hand down her dorsal side to her waist, and back up again—then down, in long strokes. By the third long stroke in the slick wetness under that heavy fall of hair, the scream tapered off. He could see where he had stroked because of the streaks of blood that his hands left, his blood and hers. She was so slippery with sweat that there was no stickiness.
She lifted her head and looked back at him with huge eyes. They asked a question, but were not afraid. Jack sighed in satisfaction as the larva stopped waving. He removed his hand from her back—a bad idea. She screamed all the louder, and lifted a hand to her face. He slapped it away and grabbed her, then recommenced his treatment. She was clearly dangerous without his touch.
No insect had ever been this size, so he was thankful that he'd had difficult specimens who'd made him perfect his technique. He guided the woman down by his touch till they were both sitting, she in front and enough to the side so he had the larva in full-frontal view.
Even in her urge to flight and her giving in to him, she'd been strangely accepting, passive, stoic even—possibly explained by the mass of welts on her back. They reminded him of a night when the team had been playing 'Encyclopedia', tossing in the most ridiculous entries they could think of, and Hal threw in, " An interesting point of Xalcitoco culture is that women remove all their body hair. For this purpose first they rub ashes on their bodies in the area they don't want hair and then they pull the hair with no pain." Hal won the last bottle of cerveza for the no pain bit, though he almost got himself punched out by Prescott Selms when he insisted that this one was real. The only thing he'd made up was the tribe. "Look it up when you get back," he insisted, hurt.
Now as Lorimer's fingers travelled along her back, he wondered about pain. Did the brazos anaesthetize? He scooched himself forward to examine her face. She had closed her eyes, but he couldn't see any tightened muscles in the eye socket area, nor above her nose. Her mouth was slightly open, her breaths not only regular, but rather deep. Yes, he decided. They do anaesthetize, as he had thought they would. Like leeches and vampire bats.
His free hand gripped the bottle in his lap.
The shadows deepened. No progress. The larva seemed, dammit, to have fallen into a state of stupor, no more ready to climb out than when Jack first saw it. He wondered how long he could keep his hand moving before his own muscles locked. Already, his biceps felt like hot knives were lightly slitting their fibres.
The pain and boredom were nothing compared to the prize. Lorimer's thoughts turned to people he despised, the ones who collect by spreading out canopies and gassing trees, sometimes the same ones for 25 years or more. He shuddered as he thought of being that kind of scientist, one step up from a computer modeller.
Still no progress. For a while his eyes lost focus. How can I keep tabs on the larva once night falls?
She might have been asleep, her muscles had gone so slack, but suddenly she twisted herself around and faced him, chattering something, making plucking movements with her fingers toward the larva.
No, no, he said with his hands. Lorimer pointed overhead and then to her cheek, and then to his bottle. He smiled for all he was worth and then acted out himself pulling something from his own cheek, making his best yeow! face. He patted the air in what he hoped would be a universally understood we've gotta be patient. She clasped her hands, so she must have got the message.
Thank god, he thought. He stood up, stretched his arms and sat down again at her side. Then you have the curators, he thought, spending their days smelling like naptha, pulling out drawers of ants collected in the days when it was common to throw an elephant into a report about the Amazon to give it colour ...
He peered at her cheek. She wanted more of his treatment. Possibly the brazos doesn't anaesthetize.
He wished the technique didn't demand such exacting touch ...
A hunk of meat. He wished he had one with him now, as it would have quickened response, if this larva acts like the human botfly. You slap it over the larva's breathing hole, and it makes its way up through the meat to get to air. The most important thing with these grubs is that you don't try to pull them out, or they can break, as their hooks get such a great subdermal grip. As he gazed at her cheek without ceasing his touch, and couldn't help salivating at the hidden depths inside the flawless plumpness of her skin. Patience!
Her eyes were closed. She was in such perfect stasis that his hand jerked when she turned her face toward him.
That threw the larva and its appendages into incomplete profile. Talk about spectacular! He gazed at the cheek bulge, imagining the size of the mouth hooks inside. Eat that, Dermatobia hominis, he chuckled. The human botfly is a gnat compared to this.He reached out his free hand, letting go of the bottle for a moment. Gently, he turned her face to the larva's full-frontal position. Clutch that bottle! The grub had been acting as if he'd hypnotized it. But after a period of inactivity, emergence might be fast.
But again she turned her face, and tried to turn her body, so he had to, ever so gently but firmly, again repeat her positioning. This time, the bottle almost slipped out of his lap.
Her breath had smelt disturbingly meaty, but facing correctly, the rest of her rising body smell didn't envelope him as much. He was now concerned and—he couldn't help it—a teensy bit exasperated. He'd smoothed her muscles to melted butter, but now they began to twitch under his fingertips. Even the Rothschildia jorulloides, quite a willful little cuss, didn't put me through this.
He applied himself harder.<
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Night was coming. A night of gibbous moon, and cloud. Here on the forest floor—no protection, no comfort. He couldn't sit back, because of the tree's spikes. He couldn't get up to make a fire against jaguars. He thought about army ants, how he hadn't been smelling for them, listening for them. Hadn't been watching out for anything beyond signs of emergence. Take the woman to camp? No! If the larva came out on the way, he'd never catch it.
She jerked. Her breathing quickened, and the brazos waved angrily. Lorimer cursed himself. He then took to those hypnotizing strokes as if his life depended on it. Maybe it did, but now he realized also—life without the brazos would never be a life. Most tales of this insect and its victims had to be bull. But one fact was indisputable. This woman had been beaten and stripped of even her waistcord, and driven out of her village. People said that once someone became a cohuatixi, no one ever saw her again, saw her as she had been.
He dropped her hair and picked it up and ran it up her back and down. It has to be soon. He felt inside himself a thrill that was almost electric, a strength and joy and curiosity that was hard to contain. His neck muscles corded, stressed to hardness, but he didn't notice now.
Shards of moonlight fell but he only saw one, and only where it landed on her cheek. Every muscle that he could command, slaved as touch.
Yet again she moved position. She opened her eyes and reached out, touched his cheek. She stroked it in what must have been imitation of him stroking her.
He smiled and reached out again, but at the same time his ever-moving fingers on her back felt—they felt her thorax tremble. Without warning, her back arched and a groan rose from her depths.
And now she began to hum.
Before he could think, Jack dropped the jar, jerked his stiff legs inwards, and kicked himself upright and away. Whatever the supposed terrors of the brazos del amor y de la muerte—emerging larva or adult—they were still to be proven to him. But he knew from having seen with his own eyes: hymenopterae hum before they sting.
"The Arms of Love and Death" was previously published in Andromeda Spaceways, Issue 42 edited by Edwina Harvey (2009).
Lorimer's Next
No true story ends at its end, any more than weather stays as permanently apoplectic as it is at the end of the report about its current tantrum, or lives on happily ever after, after a short and sweet report of 'fine'.
Thus, the following bulletin reports a few of the next hours in Jack Lorimer's still eventful life.
~
Fear gave Lorimer speed and superhuman strength, but did nothing for his coordination and eyesight. He leapt, dodged, but didn't see to duck the liana loop that he ran into, in a full-on tackle. It slipped from his chest up to his neck, caught on his jaw, and flipped him on his back. His head hit a buttressed root, and slid to the humus.
He looked up and could only see shades of blackness. He didn't know where he was. Where she was. He wanted to call out, but one fear led to another. More than anything, he didn't want to be alone, but was too afraid to move. You idiot! Why'd you run? were his last rational thoughts.
He woke when a drop of water hit his nose. His tongue felt thick and dry and his head throbbed. Still, he could hardly believe he was still alive after being passed out on the ground for however long. He wagged his head just a little. It felt heavy but no bones crunched in his neck. So far so good. For the moment, the pain and relief he felt made him want to stay right here. In fact, if it weren't for the headache, this was more comfortable than lying on his campbed in the tent, with its sweat-sopped cloth laid over an inch of mildewed foam, and the pillow of his spare shirt rolled around his spare pants. He really wanted to go back to sleep. Nothing was crawling into his ears or munching on his scalp, or stinging the back of his neck or digging into his skull except the remains of a concussion. In fact, the back of his head felt cradled in blow-up pillows.
Another drop fell and he darted his tongue out, but the water wasn't water. It was milk. He sniffed—a meaty smell. He flung back his eyelids. Inches above them were two breasts, one of which dripped again. His head was on their owner's lap. She smiled down at him, stroked his cheek with one hand, and pointed happily to her own cheek. Her skin was so firm that the hole she pointed to was not much bigger than an enlarged pore. The larva must had emerged. Where it was now was anybody's guess. And what was it doing?
She chattered something incomprehensible, pointing to his mouth and his stomach. It was high time to get up and out of here. Gently, he shook his head clear of muzziness ... but something else was wrong.
"Get me out of these!" His hands and feet were tied with vines.
She smiled and offered a breast. He turned his head away, tried to thrash himself loose, straining his neck muscles to raise his head up and out of her lap, to jerk his body up and off her thighs, but she was strong and determined. She wrapped her arms around his head and rocked him, singing softly. He opened his mouth to scream. She opened her arms, smiled and slapped him, and then began to stroke.
"Lorimer's Next" copyright © Anna Tambour, is original to this collection.
Cooks' Tricks Nix Sticks
The good cook seizes those roots
rough and pendulous as a winter's nose,
and dishes up: vegetable oysters
in saucy pearlescent clothes.
That loaf of bread
without the cook
would be a bowl of glue.
But even glue, the cook tricks,
turning out — a roux.
The good cook takes one look at you
and knows your deepest seething.
Toe-tasting cheese,
or thick and sticky chocolate cake,
boar steak, or candied sloes in cream,
or rusks you sucked when teething.
A good cook reads you, mind and hole,
and wages war for you, passive leader,
catering to your bent.
Hungry or not, you were missing something.
When a good cook has fed you, body and soul,
you ate, you came, you went.
A trickery?
A skill mixed well with arts,
this stirrer — while you're still alive,
of your internal parts.
But mayhap trickery plays a part, since art is partly tricks,
for though
(not ruby-crusted shoes, nor hat-reeking rabbits,
nor teeth still sticky with the stuff of throats,
nor witch- nor wizard-branded sticks)
a wooden spoon's the cook's
most cheap and common, and simple humble bond.
A good cook can make mincemeat
of the crunchiest shoe, that reeking rabbit (or just its gizzard)
fresh or corned vampire, teeth and all —
and most certainly ("A piece of cake!" )
any wand
or witch or wizard
— for a good cook can make candy out of air
(and a banquet from a squall).
So if you come upon a cook who makes wand burgers, passive leader,
though your judgment will be asked for as to doneness,
know the cook knows best your hole inside, your soul, your wants.
These cooks know the way to your perfect one-ness
— even if it's, as the good cook says about wand burgers,
"just a burger beyond compare" —
"How would you like it?" any of them will ask you.
Say: "I want your recommendation, please," and then repeat her,
which for wands is ("and always has been, mind you" )
"Seared, but rare."
"Cooks' Tricks Nix Sticks" copyright © Anna Tambour, was originally published in Mythic Delirium #21, The Trickster Issue edited by Mike Allen, November 2009
Pococurante
The whole town sucked in such a big breath, a fly would of clutched its throat gasping. Would Pococurante raise a sweat to stay alive? We waved flies away with more effort. Yet at a flic
k of his wrist, grown men ducked. Dad said a word he shouldn't of in mixed company, but nobody cared.
Astride the town's great river red gum on that blazing day in February, Pococurante didn't defy death. He humiliated it.
When finally he landed head up, feet exploding dust, I cheered like I never did before, nor since. Dad made strange sounds like rain hitting dry ground. He was crying! And he wasn't alone.
Smooth as a cold beer, Pococurante passed through the crowd and down the street, the gold letters on his shirt-back slithering.
The next morning I asked Dad, "What's Pococurante mean?"
He must of been thinking for breakfast, because he answered right off. "The god of thunder, I reckon."
That made sense to me. Before Pococurante, a bullock whip was just a bullock whip.
As for the circus, I forget its name, but it was a mangy thing. It didn't have a tent so it wasn't any more than a man who rode a horse with his head in the saddle and his feet in the air. We could do that before we were six. And a woman with a beard and hairy arms, and a clown who was only funny when he pulled the red nose off his face to sneeze, and a lion who wanted to sleep and a lion tamer who doubled as the fancy-talk introducer, and Pococurante.
As for the town, it was mangy, too. One of those unloved border towns that straddle two states, where the people on both sides think life on the other side is better but it isn't, and before you notice, everybody's slipped away including you, feeling guilty but bloody relieved, like how you leave a funeral.
As for Pococurante, I had a theory I carried around inside me till I saw my first action in war. I did think, you see, till I really shouldn't of, that this Pococurante was some sort of god. That my dad had nailed him good, but at the same time missed. My dad, you see, thought Pococurante had named himself in imitation of. But Mrs Fletcher at school said there weren't any gods named Pococurante, and she reeled off all the ones there were. Plain God, who we knew. And to some, his son, so that took care of two. And Zeus and Mars and Pluto the dog-god and Neptune with his hayfork, and Tor the blond, and some more that I can't remember, but Pococurante? No.